Something's Fishy

I am painfully aware that a major part of my weight problem revolves around food. (Duh!) The problem is actually a lot more complex than just overeating - it's deeply rooted and emotional, blah, blah, blah.  

If I've learned anything from this journey over the past few years, however, it's that trying to deal with too many big things at once just sets me up for failure. For that reason I'm going to attempt to go at this slowly, but surely.   

To begin with I will focus mainly on starting to cook. As a 39 year old mother of two who just celebrated 14 years of marriage you'd probably think this was something I had been doing for quite some time.  If you knew the Spicy Chicken, however, you'd understand why I've never felt like it was worthwhile for me to take it on. Ironic, isn't it, that someone with weight issues like mine married a fabulous cook?

The thing is, the Spicy Chicken travels half the month, leaving me to fend for the 3 of us at the table more often than not. While I don't feed my kids junk on a daily basis I've been known to cook the same basic meals ad nauseum and/or give up and claim "tonight is our one night to go out".  

After stepping on the scale this morning I've come to realize that all that eating out (and the "just one" glass of wine it usually includes) has gotten me back in to major trouble.  It HAS TO STOP NOW!

There are a million theories about what "healthy eating" is but it's fairly widely accepted that fish is a good choice (especially if you choose to ignore the whole mercury poisoning thing).  Though I love fish I rarely ever eat it and am quite intimidated by the thought of cooking it.  Therefore, one of my goals on this little "cooking expedition" is to eat fish at least twice a week.  

So how does someone who just recently touched a whole, raw chicken for the first time go about cooking something as delicate as fish?  You Google "easy fish recipes" and pick the one with the fewest ingredients and shortest amount of instructions, of course!

I was excited that one of the first recipes that came up in my search was Fast Fish Tacos from Recipe Girl.  Not only do I absolutely love fish tacos, I reasoned that if I screwed the fish up I could at least hide it under a pile of salsa.  I realize this recipe isn't rocket science - it's actually about as easy as it can get - but it I'm a big believer in celebrating even the little victories and for me, fish tacos falls under that heading.  

Fast Fish Tacos  

(via Recipe Girl)

INGREDIENTS

• 1 pound boneless & skinless tilapia fillets, cut into 2-inch pieces, rinsed & patted dry
• olive oil, salt and pepper
• 3/4 cup sour cream
• 3/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons fresh salsa
• 12 corn or flour tortillas, warmed
• 1 1/2 cups shredded cabbage
• Optional garnishes: cheese, cilantro, lime, avocado

DIRECTIONS

• Heat broiler, with rack in highest position. Place fish on rimmed baking sheet; drizzle with olive oil & season with salt and pepper. Broil until fish is lightly browned on top, 5-10 minutes, until flesh is opaque throughout.
• Meanwhile in a small bowl, mix sour cream with 2 Tablespoons fresh salsa.
• Divide fish evenly among tortillas and top with shredded cabbage, sour cream, salsa and other garnishes of your choice.

I laid aluminum foil down on the pan before cooking because

I really hate scrubbing pans, especially sticky, crusty fishy ones.

It really doesn't get any easier than that, does it? 

Though I did make the sour cream/salsa mixture

I found that fresh ingredients like cilantro, lime, red onion, avocado

and salsa were all I needed as garnish

(and eliminated the extra calories from the sour cream)

Throw on a few healthy slices of avocado and some 

fresh-from-Whole-Foods salsa

and it's time for dinner!